SteelStallion said:
I don't fully understand the case, could someone explain to me what's wrong here?
I mean, they're voting for a law that prohibits the sale of adult rated games to minors. Isn't that how movies work as well? What's the issue here?
Sorry I'm not American so I don't really get it, just curious lol.
I suppose a lot of people from outside the US might not get it.
In the USA we have a right to freedom of speech/expression. Where a lot of other countries that claim to have high degrees of freedom have laws that are vaguely similar, in general most countries do not take it to the point that we do. It's one of the founding principles of our nation and way of life. I've found that a lot of people don't understand why people from the US will go off on the lack of freedom in other countries and this is one.
At any rate, the basic issue is that the goverment can't regular speech or expression, period. If the goverment gains the abillity to actively enforce age limits on a form of speech this violates one of the central freedoms of a US citizen. A voluntary rating system (basically a guideline) is one thing, a govermentally enforced rating system that allows the goverment to fine or imprison people for violations is something else entirely.
When it comes to things like adult movies, it's important to understand that the US has a system of obscenity laws. For something to be illegal it has to be declared obscene and without any redeeming merit. Each individual work has to be reviewed seperatly and judged on it's own merits, you can't for example put a blanket ban on all movies showing people having sex. In the US "Pornography" is illegal by definition, HOWEVER despite the use of the term most of what we call "Porn" is actually defended as "art films" and gets by through so much of it being produced that it's impossible to review and approve or ban every individual work. In short we call it porn, but in a legal sense it's not considered to be porn.
The "X" rating is not enforced govermentally, but by private ratings systems like the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) or similar groups. Similar to how the ESRB rates video games. The danger of violating a rating is being fined by that organization, despite it having no govermental authority. The basic idea is that these organizations are considered credible enough to the general person that having their rating/stamp means something, and losing that can actually hurt a business. Not to mention such organizations working with the movie producers themselves, a theater or a chain of theaters bucks the system, and then they will find nobody willing to rent them the films for people to see. Playing by these rules also makes it far less likely that a given "adult art film" is going to be brought up for review, since few people looking at the rating who would be offended are going to go and see it and become offended. This also means minors are generally kept out of the theaters because abiding by the system is better than bucking it.
The whole case here revolves pretty much around a govermental power grab, the US goverment has been trying to get the citizen's rights to free speech away from us for a long time, and bring it more in line with what people from other countries might expect. Attacking video games this way is an attempt to establish precedent, because once it's deemed okay for the goverment to rate and enforce the ratings of video games, it becomes progressively easier to apply that to other forms of media.
The system we have works, but the goverment wants more power (like it always does) and the whole "think of the children" aspect of this thing is just an excuse to try and justify opening the door for tighter regulation on speech. You'll notice this is an integral point to the whole arguement in the Supreme Court documents, and the goverment specifically being prohibited from having that kind of power is one of the big reasons why the law was not upheld.
You might remember things like the whole "video nasties" thing in the UK through the 1980s. It was eventually overturned, there, and we had similar hype here in the US (though it never came to that kind of a list/ban). The USA is pretty much set up to prevent the goverment from doing that kind of thing. Cases like that are also one of the reasons why Americans "arrogantly" talk about the lack of freedom in other countries.
